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A week in Canada’s first rotating bed and breakfast

Steve Arnold moved his family to Prince Edward Island to open a guest house that turns. It has since become a popular tourist attraction.

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Discover the facts and figures behind Canada's rotating house in North Rustico, P.E.I.(Ariel Teplitsky and Anne-Marie Jackson/ Toronto Star)

By Ariel TeplitskyToronto Star

Fri., Aug. 9, 2013

NORTH RUSTICO, P.E.I.—Steve Arnold can’t stop moving.

The Halifax-born entrepreneur moved to Montreal, then Toronto, as an adult before he and his wife, Stephanie, left to work in Australia for three years. No sooner had they returned to their Thornhill home than they decided to uproot the family — including his parents and a new baby — to Prince Edward Island’s tourist-friendly North Shore, where in July they inaugurated Canada’s first rotating bed and breakfast.

You read that correctly. It is a large, round house that turns, slowly, on a massive steel structure that Arnold controls with an iPhone app, giving each of the four modern ground-floor units a prime water view (as well as the less desirable parking lot view).

Arnold and family live upstairs, in a still-under-construction 2,500-square-foot “penthouse,” with a sweeping panorama of the village, harbour and Gulf of St. Lawrence. Living there means constantly moving has become a permanent part of their lifestyle.

Not surprisingly for “the gentle province,” known for its potatoes, red sand and quaint fishing villages — and whose architectural hallmark is moss-hued gables — Canada’s Rotating House has become a veritable tourist attraction. Cars slow to a crawl, passengers gawking and pointing as they pass. Others hover at the end of the driveway for a minute or two and wait to confirm that the house is, in fact, turning. More daring tourists grab their cameras and stand on the rotating platform, shooting a few seconds of wobbly video footage.

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Arnold sighs. On his long to-do list is putting up a sign “that politely says ‘Private,’” advising unsolicited visitors of the twice-weekly tours of the property that he has been leading since the rotating platform was installed last fall. The tours were part of his strategy for warming residents of North Rustico, population 583, to his plans. He held a one-day fundraiser and collected enough $5 tour fees to donate $5,000 to the regional fire hall, which was in need of a new truck.

What possessed Arnold and his wife to rotate a B&B? The couple already owned the lot, and had plans to build a prefab circular Deltec Home with rental suites, before they left to work in Sydney in 2009. But when Arnold saw a Discovery Channel show about the Everingham Rotating House in Australia, he called up Luke Everingham and made plans for a visit. He asked if it was possible to adapt the platform to Deltec’s design, and got a skeptical response, but Arnold was undeterred.

“The engineers from Australia got together with the engineers from North Carolina (where Deltec is based), along with the engineer here in P.E.I., and the platform was almost a perfect fit,” recalls Arnold, 44. “There was very little design change that needed to be done.”

Prince Edward Island already brims with rustic cottage rentals and B&Bs with country charm, so Arnold figured a round house equipped with four contemporary suites — each with a rain shower head, a granite and stainless steel kitchen, a Murphy bed and lots of dimmer switches — set upon a rotating base would be a foolproof way to set his property apart.

So far the gamble has paid off. The inaugural summer season is fully booked, even with guests having to accept the minor headaches of an unfinished property. The introductory peak season rate is $1,495 a week, competitive for the island, including a homemade daily brunch. Arnold figures the rotating base will pay itself off within five years.

But his home base, he hopes, will be just the beginning.

Arnold now owns the North American licence for the Everingham platform. He hopes that about 10 per cent of the 300 customers a year who buy a Deltec — “They’re already buying a round home,” he reasons — will want to spend an additional $400,000, give or take, to make it spin.

So, what’s it like to stay in a rotating house? I spent a week there at the end of July with my wife and 3-year-old son. The latter took to it immediately, happily jumping on and off the platform and running in circles around the house.

While it’s not exactly a merry-go-round, the house moves faster and more discernibly than we’d expected — a 360-degree rotation takes about 45 minutes before it stops and goes the other way. It took my wife a couple of days to get accustomed to looking out the window and seeing the view sweep past. It also moves more smoothly than I anticipated, and quietly, except for intermittent knocking sounds that Arnold is trying to eliminate. Thankfully, the platform is turned off at night.

The other guests, an extended family occupying two suites, said they were pleased with their stay and hoped to return. The only downside, they agreed, was the stream of tourists who would stop and gawk.

“I thought it was kind of neat,” said Linda Draper, 62, of Port Williams, N.S. “You get to see different views in the morning. It’s kind of a surprise, like, ‘Oh, where are we going to be stopped today?’”

My own greatest surprise was that, in seven days, I never grew tired of the novelty, and especially enjoyed sitting on the deck whenever our suite was in its seaside phase. (Not so much when looking out on the parking lot or the construction crew’s dumpster.) We also got anxious each night over which direction our suite would face when the turning stopped.

“Come for a month sometime and see you how you feel at the end,” advises Arnold. “I’ve stopped thinking about it. Every now and then I sit back and think, ‘Oh, it’s neat we’re rotating.’ You do get used to it.”

Canada’s Rotating House: six questions

How does it work?

The home is affixed to a giant steel structure, a design developed by Luke Everingham in Australia, which rests upon 24 pairs of urethane rubber wheels, each weighing about 300 pounds, says Steve Arnold, owner of Canada’s Rotating House. The rotation is powered by two one-horsepower motors.

Why don’t the plumbing and electricals tie themselves in knots?

Two reasons: 1. Pipes and wiring are funnelled down through the home’s central core. 2. The home spins 360 degrees before rotating in the opposite direction, so wires never travel more than six feet in either direction.

How is the rotation controlled?

Arnold has an app on his iPhone with which he can start and stop the rotation, choose a side of the house to face a certain way, or have it follow the sun’s path throughout the day. The home can also be set to turn at different speeds. Currently it takes about 45 minutes for a single rotation.

How much does it cost to run?

Arnold estimates it costs him between 25 and 50 cents per rotation, or up to $8 on a typical day, operating between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m.

How much does it cost to rotate your home?

It starts with $325,000 for delivery of Everingham’s export kit, which “includes all the steel: the steel platform, the central bearing, the track system with all the wheels, the automation and the iPhone app,” Arnold says. On top of that, the basement excavation and other factors will be larger and costlier than for a typical home. So you’re looking in the ballpark of $400,000 to spin your house.

Are there other rotating homes?

Arnold estimates there are 10 worldwide, including the original Everingham House, built in 2006, and one in Victoria, B.C., built in 1969.

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